


Child's Song

by Harryissuchalittleshit



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: 2nd person POV, Bella grows up, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, College, Dysfunctional Family, Edward grows up, Edward raises Renesmee, Evander grows up, Evander runs away, F/F, F/M, Family, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Line cook, Music, New Moon AU, Renesmee grows up, Renesmee is bisexual, Renesmee runs away, The Cullen family is not okay, Vampires, Writer, baker - Freeform, music is life, she lives a human life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harryissuchalittleshit/pseuds/Harryissuchalittleshit
Summary: "Each of us must do the things that matterAll of us must see what we can seeIt was long ago you must rememberYou were once as young and scared as me"By Tom RushShe grows up, she moves on, she stops hurting...He grows up, he learns, he feels the pain of responsibility...
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Bella Swan, Evander Cullen/Mackenzie Black, Former Bella Swan/Edward Cullen, Renesmee Cullen/Nicholas Stone, Renesmee Cullen/Other(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	1. Child's Song

**Author's Note:**

> This took me four hours to write and I suggest you listen to the song at the beginning while reading.

**Child’s Song**

_By Tom Rush_

_Goodbye momma goodbye to you too pa  
Little sister you'll have to wait a while to come along  
Goodbye to this house and all it's memories  
We just got too old to say we're wrong_

_Got to make one last trip to my bedroom  
Guess I'll have to leave some stuff behind  
It's funny how the same old crooked pictures  
Just don't seem the same to me tonight_

_There ain't no use in shedding lonely tears mamma  
There ain't no use in shouting at me pa  
I can't live no longer with your fears mamma  
I love you but that hasn't helped at all_

_Each of us must do the things that matter  
All of us must see what we can see  
It was long ago you must remember  
You were once as young and scared as me_

_I don't know how hard it is yet mamma  
When you realize you're growning old  
I know how hard is not to be younger  
I know you've tried to keep me from the cold_

_Thanks for all you done it may sound hollow  
Thank you for the good times that we've known  
But I must find my own road now to follow  
You will all be welcome in my home_

_Got my suitacse I must go now  
I don't mind about the things you said  
I'm sorry Mom I don't know where I'm going  
Remember little sister look ahead_

_Tomorrow I'll be in some other sunrise  
Maybe I'll have someone at my side  
Mamma give your love back to your husband  
Father you've have taught we well goodbye  
Goodbye Mamma goodbye to you too pa_

~`~

The sun shines for three days straight after graduation.

She doesn’t know how to feel, how to breathe with so much warmth in the air. She opens her window for the first time in months, for the first time since her father closed it and told her to keep it close back in November. She didn’t have a reason to let the cold in anymore anyways.

The sun is warm and bright and makes her feel alive again.

She decides to go to school on the East Coast. It’s miles and miles and miles away from either of her parents, from her mother who doesn’t think to worry and her father who only worries. It took the long winter months to realize that she shouldn’t be the one worrying, she isn’t a mother; she’s only an eighteen year old girl.

Eighteen year old girls shouldn’t be doing the housework, they shouldn’t be making their parents dinner every night, they shouldn’t worry like how she does. She’s only eighteen, but after a month of classes she turns nineteen.

The world isn’t as quiet at nineteen as it had been at eighteen.

Her classes are hard, but she isn’t in a haze as she had once been the year before. Her birthday reminded her of the scars on her right arm, the bite and the glass, she likes to wear long sleeves anyways.

The time spent around classes and homework and eating are spent in cafes with books or in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant learning how to really cook. A good home cook isn’t the same as a bad line cook it turns out, but she finds her voice between the men on the line.

She learns to yell, she learns to be heard.

The little bit of time left is spent in notebooks and journals trying to figure out all the thoughts and stories in her head. Her mother trained her to be an adult as a child, she took away her childhood in hopes to gain a caretaker. Her father fought for her at the wrong time, too late and not hard enough.

She learns that whispers don’t mean anything when there is no one to whisper to.

~`~

At fourteen, she pitched an unholy temper tantrum about going to her once hometown. Going to the town she was born in, the town she should’ve been raised in. Her mother had no right to raise her, her mother didn’t really raise her as much as groom her.

Her father should’ve fought her, should’ve told her no. But he gave her everything he could because he didn’t know better, when all you want is a child to love you, you give in unnecessarily. Her mother didn’t know she had to fight, her father didn’t fight hard enough.

Her parents should’ve realized that something was wrong then.

~`~

Her scribbles become more conscious as news comes back to her of her old friends. Marriage and babies are happening too quickly, too young. She had already been a mother to her own mother, so she sits back and reads emails and looks at photos sent from across the country.

She finds time to print a few out and tape them above her desk and into her notebooks and journals. She becomes the long distance ‘Auntie’ who sends cookies and books and handwritten stories with little doodles.

She doesn’t know them in person, but grows to love them over skype and phone calls.

Sometimes it’s just about listening, just about hearing what others have to say. Its how the kitchen works on long nights, orders and commands shorten to one word answers, a number is the longest thing anyone says. Questions and explanations are for a later time, when the world inside four walls is quiet.

She lives where the world isn’t quiet. Where the stars are street lights flickering and the moon only shows itself during power outages.

Her hands don’t still anymore. She remembers someone else who never sat still, who was always moving and thinking wildly. She lets the specifics get foggy and dull in her mind. She lets the hard edges of her memory soften.

She does not wish for memories anymore, unless she’s making them herself.

She prints out more photos and tapes them to the wall, she has a collage of happy and warm faces, of friends and family that chose to keep her close. When the package arrives of things found in her floorboards, she can tell that her father didn’t send it.

Inside is photos of a different time, of a party that ended badly, of a boyfriend who lied.

She knows what good lies sound like, but she doesn’t let it consume her. He made a choice, he made his bed, she lies in it though. Suffering is not for the faint of heart, suffering is for those who still need a beating heart.

She throws away the pictures, except for one, everything else finds a home in her tiny apartment.

~`~

At seventeen, she makes a return and is unthankful. Her thoughts lead to bad news, lead to a boy who doesn’t know how to love. She doesn’t know how to love.

Seventeen is a time for mistakes, a time to do stupid things and go wild and be crazy. It is not the time to babysit your mother and try to take care of your father. No one wants that, she never wanted that.

She grows younger the older she gets.

~`~

She lets nineteen become twenty.

Her birthday is celebrated by a free dinner from the kitchen that she didn’t have to make herself. She passes on the cake, but it gets shoved into a takeout box like her dinner and she spends the rest of the night dissecting each ingredient instead of eating it.

The next morning she skips class and a reading, and learns how to make the cake.

Unlike cooking, there is no guess work to baking. Everything is precise and perfect and depends upon details such as humidity and temperature. It’s not about how fast you move, but how fast the dough, the batter, the slowly moving temperature allow you to move.

There is more noise in the bakery, also earlier mornings and later nights. She still finds the time to work with her boys, her family in this strange loud city, where the lights never go off. She can still give one word answers and time estimates that are correct to a second.

She still can’t shut off her mind at night without a book, without writing. Her homework gets better grades the closer to the deadline that she works. She gets asked to join the school newspaper, she gets asked to take notes and sit in on classes that she shouldn’t be taking yet.

She gets her options together, she chooses the life she wants.

Her cakes always seem to tilt a little to the left, until a warm hand teaches her differently. Kind words and soft voices and warm hands make the difference.

She threw out the photos first, the plane tickets are second.

~`~

At four, her father calls her mother and asks when she claimed to be allergic to housework. Just because she never did it when they lived together, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how. Someone had to teach their only daughter.

Their only daughter.

She will always be that, the only child. She knew at four that it wasn’t right, that she shouldn’t be in charge of money or lists or chores, but she is. Age is just a number after all.

Age is _not_ just a number.

~`~

It takes a week away from school and work and her life to finally put everything together. Her collage of happy smiling faces remind her whenever she strays to keep going. To keep typing the thoughts and scribbles and stories that she put on paper over the last few years into a document.

It takes longer to sort through the mess and make something real. To make thoughts into scribbles into sentences. Her time at the restaurant, early mornings and late nights, her time at school, at the newspaper, at cafes and in books, takes more time than she can give.

She learned how to not sleep years before, not just because of nightmares, but because the world had more to give to those who took it. She likes the noise at night more than during the day, the hushed tones and forgiveness given to the sleeping.

She falls back into music in seedy bars after long nights on the line and in cafes for her final cup of coffee before she goes home. Classical music is still her favorite, but there is more to life than classical music and bell like laughter.

Her hands aren’t meant for the piano, but a guitar fits perfectly. Her voice is hoarse from nights of yelling at her family on the line, but that doesn’t stop her from singing. Her boys like rap and rock and loud things until late at night, the bakers like pop and country and love songs, she falls in between. She finds stories in every song, in every album.

Her scribbles start to take a different note, her time is spread thin with late nights and early mornings. But her scribbles aren’t just that, they start to take shape into the form of sentences and songs and stories.

She lets the kind voices and warm hands read a piece first.

~`~

At fifteen, her mother _tried_ to teach her to drive.

At sixteen, her father _actually_ taught her to drive.

He’s more cautious, more level headed, more calm than her mother. He explains everything before he lets her loose, his eyes never leaving the road in front of them. He’s a better teacher than she expected, much better than her mother the kindergarten teacher.

She makes the decision that she loves him like how she should.

~`~

Twenty-one is a night of real celebration, she wakes up with almost all of her hair gone and a headache that won’t go away. She had wanted to cut her hair for a while, but with half of her hair cut to just above her shoulder and one side of her head shaved, she doesn’t know what to think.

Once her headache clears, she dyes it green and doesn’t look back.

It takes months for the green to fade, for the hair to grow back. The next color is red, then blue, then blonde, then finally back to brown. Each color is like a test, she becomes more of herself with each color, each change.

Humans change, they adapt, they fight, they conquer. No one wants to stay the same forever. No one wants to be the same forever.

She graduates early, she publishes her book, she works at the restaurant.

Her bakers change, her boys change too. She makes desserts and candies and breads, she teaches the new kids how to make their cakes not lean to the left. She makes risotto and fish and steaks, she’s loud and heard, she yells out the commands and orders now.

She still reads and writes and calls her collage of children that call her ‘Auntie’. She’s still herself, even if her hair color changes, even if she doesn’t sleep for a week, even if she’s not taking notes anymore.

With no homework to worry about, she takes the internship at the newspaper. She reads her pieces out loud to her bakers, to her boys on the line, they cheer her on and encourage to do more. She writes about them in her scribbles, keeping a separate journal just for them.

She brings her guitar in one night, her day off is the next night, but open mic is only once a week at their favorite bar. Her voice is hoarse from her days of screaming in her sleep, but also from the bad habits she picked up from her boys, the sweet smoke doesn’t burn and make her cough anymore.

She sings of a first love, of a mistake that no seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old girl should be punished for. This story isn’t about him, it’s about her.

She moves on.

~`~

At eleven, she doesn’t understand why she bleeds.

She had the classes, she talked to her mother, she read and read and read about her changing body. She learned more about herself bleeding and hurting than about journaling and scribbling down her thoughts.

Later, whenever she bled, she was scared, the smell made her sickly and scared, it made her want to hide. She bleeds, she hides in herself, she disappears.

At twelve, she refuses to leave the house if she’s dripping blood.

~`~

Her book gets a tour, if a tour can be just a few bookstores around the city of twinkling lights. Her stars are still flickering lights and her days grow longer, twenty-four hours are not enough in a day. Not enough time to make cakes and desserts, to write reviews and columns for the newspaper, to run the line with her boys. It’s not enough time to write her scribbles and look at her smiling faces above her desk.

Her tour gets expanded and her boys throw her a party. They sing her praises, they each buy her book, she signs them as if its high school again and this is their yearbook. She writes on the road, letters to her bakers, to her line boys, to her smiling faces. She writes and scribbles and her tour is spent with long stretches of time in the air or in cars and buses.

She mails her letters with post cards and photos and greetings to the ones she loves. She writes songs and her voice is still hoarse and she starts to really heal.

Traveling the country is fun, meeting people that love her words, spoken and unspoken, written and unwritten, is wonderful. She meets children and teenagers and adults of all walks of life, one girl tells her that she sees herself in her.

She tells the girl to run, to not fall in the place that she climbed out of.

Little girls, teenage girls should look at her as what not to do, not what they should do. She never wanted to be a role model. She is just a girl with too much time on her hands who can’t make herself sleep.

She doesn’t sleep on her tour from one end of the country to the other, she smokes and drinks, she sings and plays her guitar, she scribbles and writes and doodles. In the city of sunlight, of humble beginnings and larger than life figures, she types until she’s dizzy.

She’s going to come out of this tour with another book if she isn’t careful.

She has never been careful.

~`~

At five, she discovers that walking isn’t easy. She’s much better at tripping, stumbling, and falling. She gets good at catching herself and good at knowing where not to walk. She starts to recognize that she is not graceful.

She hates dance class more than anything, it isn’t easy and it isn’t fun. She is not meant to be graceful and light, she is meant to stay still, even though she can’t.

It gets harder as she gets older, her body grows and changes and she still can’t help but fall when the wind blows. She is not one for grace, not one to be careful.

Cuts and scrapes and bruises never bothered her anyways.

~`~

Her tour ends close to her old life, she makes the visit. She wants her bike, she wants to ride again, feel the rush of wind in her hair and happiness in her blood. She has always bleed easily, always hurt and felt sadness more than others. She is more than just a girl now.

She is greeted by friends, by her father, by the life she had once lived. Her smiling faces call her ‘Auntie’ for the first time without a screen in between. She holds babies and children, she hugs friends and family. Her father cries when she leaves with her old truck and comes back with a motorcycle.

She loves the motorcycle and already knows that it will take her back to her city. Her father isn’t happy, but it’s been years since he’s been happy with her. He reminds her that she isn’t one to lose herself, but she reminds him that she doesn’t know who she lost.

She still doesn’t sleep, instead she throws everything into her new stories, her new book. She spends a week with her old family and friends, with stories of her new life. She shares and shares and shares until she can’t anymore.

She leaves in the quiet of the night, her bike roaring to life and happiness underneath her. She feels free as she flies along highways, racing only against her gas tank. She rides to feel the wind in her hair, no helmet after she lost it somewhere a day or two’s trip away.

She stops at night, more for the routine than the need. She finds all-night diners and booths that are slightly sticky and coffee that could be better. The servers don’t bother her while she writes, as long as she gives away a dollar or two every few hours.

Coffee does her well enough, but when the sky starts to lighten even a fraction, she takes to flying again. She flies over the roads and is back to her city before she knows it.

Her bakers and her boys welcome her with hugs and love that she wants more than what she received while gone. They are her family more than she knows.

~`~

At thirteen, she grows into an unknown body.

She gets curves that she doesn’t know what to do with. She gets curves before the others in her class, having been held back to give her a better chance. She has always been older, always been more.

She grows quickly, her body changing over time in a warm and soft sort of way. The memories of it all are starting to get blurry.

~`~

It starts to fall into place, book tours and working in the restaurant and writing for the newspaper. It’s all fun, while being all up in the air at the same time. She doesn’t sleep, but sometimes she’ll fine herself drifting off at her desk, the memories of her smiling faces coming back to her.

She prints more photos.

Her collage takes up the whole wall, and not just above her desk. Her children, the little boys and girls who call her ‘Auntie’ and who sing her praises, all get letters and stories and words printed for them. A chapter for each child, for each of her smiling faces.

She remembers hugs and kisses and love given to her from small bodies.

One thing leads to another, she turns another year older. Her life is a blur of baking in the early mornings, writing for the newspaper in the afternoon, and line work with her boys at night. Her late nights are either spent singing and playing her guitar, or smoking and drinking, or writing her scribbling thoughts on paper.

She triple locks her door every night and every morning and every time she comes and goes through her apartment. The ones after her won’t be bothered by a lock, let alone three.

At her latest return, they are waiting for her.

He’s the same, his hands don’t relax, just tremble and move and he stares at her with golden eyes. There is nothing soft about those eyes, she once thought of them as gemstones, but that is not what they are.

She knows the danger that lurks behind them now.

The other pair are familiar, she sees them on her own face even now. Being human is about changing and adapting, she has let herself change and adapt.

Her daughter is beautiful, the father is nervous.

~`~

At nineteen, she has a child with red curls and brown eyes and freckles on pale, pale skin.

Her father is not pleased, but it becomes easy to look up where her daughter’s father if you know where to look. It took a plane with one round trip ticket and one one-way ticket. Her daughter will do better without her.

She disappears.

~`~

Her daughter likes the bike, they ride everywhere together. She enrolls her in school, she shows her the bakers, the newspaper, and the boys that she’s grown to love. She shows her the late night bar and her scribblings, she lets him read her books.

Her daughter sleeps, he stays up late with her as if he had a choice. She still doesn’t sleep, instead she lives her life with her daughter and the love of her life, though he doesn’t know what to do.

She finds herself singing in the late night, to her daughter who sleeps and breaths and shows her everything she can.

She is twenty-three, though she doesn’t look older than twenty. Her life of fun, of no responsibilities other than the ones she gave herself, has not aged her.

She is immortal without a bite, she once begged for that life.

She wonders if she’ll look younger or older once he manages to change her. She knows now that age is not just a number. Just as she knows that pain is moving forward, that she can move forward with or without him.

She’s already done it once.

~`~

At seven, her skin breaks and her bone hurts.

She feels pain a bit differently than others, the physical pain is pushed away, but the emotional pain freezes her whole body. She tries not to hurt, tries not to feel the pain as she curls up around her arm.

Her mother screams when she see the damage, but she just wants to call her father, she wants to ask why she was left alone. She is not a girl with psychic abilities, she is only a girl who cries and screams into the night.

~`~

Her daughter begs her to sleep, sits in her lap and holds her until she relents. Sleep doesn’t come to her, hasn’t since she was full of her daughter.

Sleep has only brought her nightmares in her past. But she doesn’t live in the past anymore.

A new life grows underneath her skin. She still cannot sleep, even if it’s for the best. She lets herself grow ragged, she leaves the newspaper first, then her bakers, and finally her boys. Her city of flickering lights and new moons disappear in rearview mirrors.

Her daughter sleeps, her new life grows bigger and bigger beneath her skin.

She curls up in a lavish bed with her collage on one wall, her desk set up underneath. She will not live past this child, she feels it with every breath. He came back to her to prove a point, she went with him to give him hope.

She screams into the night, not because of the pain, but because she knows her life is over. She remembers her life, the pieces of love and happiness she found. Her books and guitar, her journals and scribbles that gave her life.

Her collage is not just small faces that she knew through a screen, they are also the bakers with warm hands and kind words, her boys who loved and supported her with every change in her life, the newspaper which helped her grow. She closes each memory in her mind, each of her loved ones, each of her friends, her family. She loves them all, loves them like breathing.

She gives birth to a boy, he is small and sweet and hers.

She sleeps with him in her arms.

~`~

At twenty-three, her heart stops beating.

~`~

Bella opened her eyes, Edward stood in the doorway with their son Evander in his arms and with Renesmee’s thin arms wrapped around his waist. They look like both of them, like her husband and herself. She is more than just a heartbroken girl now.

She ran away from being a mother, let the one boy who hurt her most take on the responsibility she couldn’t bear to hold onto. She ran to her city of flickering lights, let her grief of separation take over her. She grew and changed and become a person, she was no longer a child.

She was no longer a human.


	2. Come Back...Be Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two - Edward's turn!

**Come Back...Be Here**

by Taylor Swift

_You said it in a simple way_

_4AM, the second day_

_How strange that I don't know you at all_

_Stumbled through the long goodbye_

_One last kiss, then catch your flight_

_Right when I was just about to fall_

_I told myself, don't get attached_

_But in my mind, I play it back_

_Spinning faster than the plane that took you_

_And this is when the feeling sinks in_

_I don't wanna miss you like this_

_Come back, be here, come back, be here_

_I guess you're in New York today_

_I don't wanna need you this way_

_Come back, be here, come back, be here_

_The delicate beginning rush_

_The feeling you can know so much_

_Without knowing anything at all_

_And now that I can put this down_

_If I had known what I know now_

_I never would've played so nonchalant_

_Taxi cabs and busy streets_

_That never bring you back to me_

_I can't help but wish you took me with you_

_And this is when the feeling sinks in_

_I don't wanna miss you like this_

_Come back, be here, come back, be here_

_I guess you're in London today_

_And I don't wanna need you this way_

_Come back, be here, come back, be here_

_This is falling in love in the cruelest way_

_This is falling for you when you are worlds away_

_In New York, be here_

_But you're in London, and I break down_

_'Cause it's not fair that you're not around_

_This is when the feeling sinks in_

_I don't wanna miss you like this_

_Come back, be here, come back, be here_

_I guess you're in New York today_

_And I don't wanna need you this way_

_Come back, be here, come back, be here_

_Oh-oh, oh-oh_

_I don't wanna miss you like this_

_Oh-oh, oh-oh_

_Come back, be here_

_Come back, be here_

~`~

_Come home, come back, come here._

The words haunted him and scared him, it was one thing to ask him to come home, but to _beg_. Begging was beneath him, beneath them, and to hear from his family.

It was _unforgivable_.

But he came, he came anyways. He came to see what was wrong, what was going to happen, why they needed him. He was ready to be disappointed, ready to be upset over something trivial, but it wasn’t that.

It was her.

She fit perfectly in his arms, small and delicate and so fragile that he can feel himself shaking with fear. This was never supposed to happen, a moment of weakness, a moment of self-doubt, created her.

He had left and now the consequences of his actions were here to lord over him.

He was once a religious man, but this sin made him stop believing. How could something so amazing and wonderful be considered a _sin_? She was anything but that.

She was just so _small_ , her tiny heart beating loud and fast and clear. She was beautiful, her hair wispy and thin and soft under his hands; her eyes clear and dark, the same as his Beloved; she’s an angel with a familiar face and lungs that don’t stop. Her breathing calms him, soft and clear, until anyone lets her go.

She was no sin.

She loves to be held, whether by him or by his family. She cries whenever they put her down, even if for a second. They no longer get to all be together, unless she’s with them. Her arms reach for him and her cries are like nails on a chalkboard.

At least they don’t need sleep.

~`~

When he was seventeen, he died.

He died and became reborn, stuck in this new life forever.

At seventeen, he’ll never move forward.

~`~

Her thoughts start become clear when she gets a voice, she cries still, but not as she used to. Names and words are associated with the people in their lives. Her nana and grandpa, her aunts and uncles, and him.

Dada is a word that he falls in love with, she mumbles it all day, every day. It’s a soft sound, kind and needy and sweet, it’s more than he could ever hope for. She looks up at him with familiar eyes and he melts, she grows more into herself with each passing day.

He thought he would grow tired of the sound, he grows tired of his own name every day, every time it gets called. But this new name is perfect, and he could never get tired of her voice.

He was forced into this roll, but he had forced a different life on his Beloved. If this was his punishment, for the sins he committed, then he would take it.

Talking, it turned out to be the beginning of it, while walking came next. Walking was a lot harder than any of them knew, standing was even a struggle when you were ten months old.

It took a lot of hand holding, a lot of soft encouragement, and a lot of comfort when she fell. She was a lot stronger than he ever knew, and more determined than he ever figured. Stubbornness ran in her blood, something that he couldn’t help but be proud in.

She was more than just him, more than his Beloved.

Her first steps were celebrated, all seven of them watched as she went from her nana’s arms and into his own. Seven voices all cheering her on, seven voices all congratulating her.

She was already so much more than the rest of them at ten months old then they were in their immortal ages. Ten months was a mile stone he couldn’t compete with, none of them could compete with her.

~`~

At seventeen, he dreamed of war.

He dreamed of running away and being a hero, he dreamed of faraway nations and stories to tell his future grandchildren. He dreamed and he loved and he wished for a life that he couldn’t give up on. He dreamed and he lost and he died.

~`~

One year.

One year after she was born, given away, and placed into his arms.

She was one years old.

A birthday had been the reason for all of this, for her, for the life she breathed into him. He couldn’t sleep, but she did. She opened her eyes for him and reached for him, and even though he could hear her thoughts, it was different when she touched him and saw something he hadn’t expected.

She _showed_ him her thoughts.

It was an other worldly experience, grounding to a man who had been around the world over and over again. It was unnatural, but he didn’t know of anything that wasn’t anymore.

He played the piano for her, she sat on his lap and reached for his fingers. She giggled at the twinkling sound and asked him to play it again and again, over and over for her. He couldn’t help himself, she was bringing this love back to him.

She was bringing him a love that he thought he had once lost. A love of music and noise, a love of a piano and violin and bass, a love of the one thing he was good at.

She was his world, soft and sweet and warm and home. She was his home, dressed in the clothes of a toddler, a baby girl with warm eyes and a thousand watts smile.

She was his love, wrapped so tight around her fingers that he wouldn’t be able to breathe if he needed too. He loved her, he loved her and wanted her to have the world, wanted her to be his world.

He smiled at her and rocked her in his arms, planting kisses to her forehead and rosy cheeks and chubby arms and legs. She was a year old now, a year old and growing more and more in front of his eyes.

She was sweet to him, always smiling, always wanting him. She liked to be in his arms, or sometimes on his shoulders, always determined to get up there himself. She even sometimes liked to be on his back, in the sling he carried her in, ran with her in.

Even hunting he had trouble being away from her, years and years of practice made it easy to run with her on his back. He could hunt with her, she seemed to like the rush, like the taste of blood as much as he did.

Like father, like daughter was a joke that he liked to hear in his family’s mind more than others.

He had once thought that another person would be in torture to be like him, but she is anything but in torture. She finds everything silly, she giggles and laughs at everything he does, she always wants him whenever he leaves her, she always wants to be like him.

She follows after him, and he loves her for it. He follows in her tiny footsteps and babbling words, and she loves him for it.

~`~

At seventeen he longed for love.

He always wanted more out of life, wanted more out of the people around him, wanted a life that couldn’t be given to him. He grew up to be loved and cared for, he grew up knowing love, but not seeing it until after his death.

His parents knew love, his siblings knew love, even his friends knew love.

He left his Beloved, but found something even better in his daughter.

His daughter.

~`~

He put her in his lap and let her reach out to touch the keys of the piano. She always makes him play for her. At eighteen months old, she’s singing to him. Her voice is high and wavering, but it’s a pretty noise, it brings him warmth unlike anything he knows.

Her thoughts are more concrete now than before.

She has wants unlike before. She _wants_ him to hold her, she _wants_ him to play for her, she _wants_ him to pick her up and carry her. She has wants that he can fill, and she has wants that he doesn’t know what to do with.

She has come to the understanding that he can read her thoughts. She has also come to the understanding that if she really wants something, then she will have to ask. She always presses her hand to his jaw, the easiest spot that she can reach.

He keeps one picture of his Beloved, from their prom night. She’s a beauty in blue, her long hair flowing easily down her back, she’s all rose and cream.

He frames the picture and puts it in her bedroom. Every night he rocks her in her rocking chair, he tells he everything that he can bare to tell her about her mother, his Beloved. He doesn’t know where she is in the world, he can’t let himself know.

He would leave his daughter for her, to find her and bring her back to him.

He can’t do that to either of them.

~`~

At seventeen he dreams of a future.

A wife, a baby, a war fought and won, a life lived for and a death served well.

His life jumped around in ways he never expected, but now he can’t complain.

~`~

She is almost four when she demands to meet her mother.

He knows why, knows why she demands this of him. She sits in front of the picture some days, when he needs a few seconds of time to himself. His parents let him know, his siblings let him know, she wants to meet her.

His father had let him know that she had been left at only a few days old. That she would have no memories of his Beloved and that she would never know her. Every day it breaks his heart.

She starts to sing to herself late at night, hours after he put her to bed. It takes three nights for him to realize she’s soothing herself to sleep. Before she would come to find him, crawl into his arms and curl up in his lap.

She’s getting older, smarter, and soon she would be better than him, than all of them.

She loves to draw, she loves to learn and is asking questions. Somedays he can’t bring himself to have the patience to answer her, but his parents do. They sit with her and turn her questions back around on her. They listen to her answers and teach her how to move the conversation forward.

Four years old is much harder and braver than ten months old.

At four years old, the world is much bigger than her. The world stops being so forgiving. The world opens itself to her and grows and changes.

At four years old, she dances and plays and runs, she chases after his siblings, laughing and giggling and shrieking with happiness and delight. She falls asleep in ready arms, she sings to the world, she cries to him late at night.

She no long screams when she cries, instead she gasps and hiccups and wraps her arms tight around him. Scrapes and cuts come easy, bruises and bumps bloom and appear on her skin moments after contact. She is a child, she grows and learns.

She still sits in his lap and demands that he plays the piano for her. She has no interest in learning herself, but she loves to rest her head against his chest and fall asleep listening to him play.

She will always be the baby that was thrusted into his arms by his shaking brother.

~`~

At seventeen he travels the world.

The world is large, it grows and shows him it’s secrets. He meets new and exciting people, he learns everything he can.

He meets a beautiful girl, he meets a baby with red curls and brown eyes and freckly pale, pale skin. He makes a family.

~`~

He expects the plane ride to be bad, she has never been farther than a few miles from home. She doesn’t remember her last plane ride because her life was still counted in hours and not days, or months, or years.

She sleeps with her head in his lap, he can’t keep his fingers still. She doesn’t mind it when he plays with her hair, his sister taught him to braid the second her hair had grown long enough. He keeps it clean, soft and silky, her curls the same color as his.

The landing is the worst, he can’t keep her in his lap for appearances, but it doesn’t matter. She cries because her ears hurt, he never would’ve been able to help her anyways. Flying didn’t exist when he was alive.

He carries her off the plane kicking and screaming and crying. Her name for him in every sob, _daddy, daddy, daddy please!_

He ignores the thoughts sent after him, the other passengers thought he was her brother.

She falls back asleep clinging to his chest. The pounding in her ears is gone, she sleeps off all the pain and emotion. He wishes for sleep as he navigates the sounds and smells and sights around him. He holds her in his arms and carries their bags over his shoulder. She’s too old for her diaper bag, but it works to carry her things, she has more things packed than him.

He climbs in through the fire escape and lays across his Beloved bed. Her scent burns, it hurts and makes him dizzy.

He is still in love.

~`~

At seventeen love comes easy and fast and hard.

It washes over him, it keeps him whole and alive and warm. Heat doesn’t come easy to him, he feels it, but only as an extreme. Love is different, an emotion that makes him warm is unheard of.

He doesn’t complain.

~`~

They talk.

The words don’t seem to leave them fast enough. Their daughter sleeps, she eats, she talks and sings to them both. She goes to school and he is left alone with only her books.

At nights, she doesn’t sleep, sits at her desk and types away. She is always busy, always doing something. She cooks, she writes, she sings and plays her guitar. She is a force to be reckoned with and he loves her more.

Nights blend into days, days into night, they talk and they sit in silence. She is beautiful and he can’t help but want her, she keeps herself guarded.

They give themselves one day.

With no child, their daughter at school, they give themselves one day to reconnect everything.

He loves her.

Her mind is quiet in a world that doesn’t shut up. The world is loud to him and she keeps it quiet.

He loves her.

Her world is bright, her world is friendly and full and loved. She is brighter than he’s ever known her. He wants to keep her bright.

The world changes around them.

~`~

At seventeen he comes home.

His silent brother places a baby into his arms and his world turns and spins and swallows him whole. He is a father. He has a daughter. He doesn’t have his Beloved by his side.

A baby is a responsibility he never thought he would own.

~`~

Her body changes, she is growing in a ways he’s never seen before. Her curves grow and her stomach blooms with life.

She gives up her bike, her jobs, her singing. She gives up the life she loved, the life she knew, she gives it up for him.

He loves her more for it.

Their daughter is a world of energy and excitement, they sleep together for hours. They curl up around one another and he feels his heart grow and warm watching them. Instead of his arms, they run to each other, they love each other more and more.

She loses her grace the bigger she gets, always reaching out for his hands. She is the only one that can make them calm. Years of searching, years of trying has not helped with the shaking of his hands, but now with her they slow and still.

~`~

At seventeen he loses against the illness.

His body aches and burns and hurts, the fire getting worse and worse, consuming him whole.

He wakes up and sees red.

~`~

His Beloved screams, it’s a sound that makes him feel weak. Only once before he had heard the noise. He feels as if his world is ending, but then he’s called to action. His daughter needs him, she needs him to be strong, to be there while their world grows brighter.

Their son is beautiful.

His Beloved holds him and sleeps for the first time in months. When she wakes, it will be to a new world, something bright and different and new for her, old for him. She’ll finally see the world as he does.

Their son is calm and sweet, he sleeps and breaths and he remembers their daughter when she was little. He is the same as she had once been. She loves him, she loves him and loves to be around him. He loves her the same way, it’s easy to see, even if it can’t be heard.

His Beloved is silent as the change works it’s magic. This world is filled with magic, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t work in the way anyone thinks, but it’s magic. Magic is whole and unchanging, it works for them.

Their children can hear her beating, hear her heart slowing with every breath. She’ll wake up and she won’t be the same to them.

She’s missed so much of this life, missed their daughter’s first steps, first words, first want. She’ll be there for their son.

He sits outside her door and waits, sometimes playing the piano, sometimes holding their baby boy. But he sits and waits for her heart to stop beating, lets the hours and minutes and seconds tick by.

He’s holding their son when the third heartbeat stops, their daughter is at his side in a second. Her skinny little arms wrap around him when he opens the door.

~`~

At seventeen everything happens out of order.

He dies first, he never goes to war, he has a daughter and son, he gets married.

Life has a way of working out, death has a way of mixing everything up in the end.

~`~

Edward smiled as Bella took Evander from him.

He looked more like her than Renesmee did at the same age. He was calmer than Renesmee ever was at that age.

Renesmee let go of him and took a tentative step forward to Bella, before wrapping her arms around him. She looked up at her mother and smiled, Bella matched the expression.

Edward reached forward and lightly touched her cheek, they were the same temperature now. She was no longer searing hot, she was warm the same as him.

He loved her, he could feel it in his heart, he could feel it in the silence of the room. He felt her push forward to him, their lips meeting as he closed his eyes.


	3. Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this in a word doc for a very long time, and I had no idea if I ever would post it.
> 
> But this story has gotten more reads than I thought it would, so here's Renesmee's take.

**Falling**

By Florence and the Machine

_I've fallen out of favor and I've fallen from grace  
Fallen out of trees and I've fallen on my face  
Fallen out of taxis, out of windows too  
Fell in your opinion when I fell in love with you_

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh  
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh_

_Sometimes I wish for falling, wish for the release  
Wish for falling through the air to give me some relief  
Because falling's not the problem, when I'm falling I'm at peace  
It's only when I hit the ground it causes all the grief_

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh  
Whoa-oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh_

_This is a song for a scribbled-down name  
And my love keeps writing again and again  
This is a song for a scribbled-down name  
And my love keeps writing again and again  
And again and again and again and again  
And again and again and again and again  
And again and again and again and again  
And again and again and again and again_

_I dance with myself, I drunk myself down  
Found people to love, left people to drown  
I'm not scared to jump, I'm not scared to fall  
If there was nowhere to land I wouldn't be scared at all  
At all  
At all_

_Fall  
Fall_

_Sometimes I wish for falling, wish for the release  
Wish for falling through the air to give me some relief  
Because falling's not the problem, when I'm falling I'm at peace  
It's only when I hit the ground it causes all the grief_

~`~

They move the day after her Freshman year of high school is over.

It’s her first time going through school, her brother starts seventh grade the same time she starts her Sophomore year. The world is different now that she is older, now that she had two parents and not just her father, now that she has a brother.

Four years is a long time when you’ve only lived for four years.

She had been left in the arms of her favorite uncle, silent and calm and scared of her, he held her until her father appeared. He had held her in shaking arms and cared for her even when the rest of the family tried to take a turn. She had been protected with him, something that never changed.

She is used to the moving, she had her first plane ride when she was a few hours old, her second at four. She flew again at five, then eight, then twelve, and now just before sixteen.

She likes to fly, but she loves to run, loves to drive as if she was running.

Her father still flies with her, lets her put her head on his lap and fall asleep. Sometimes she just likes the feel of his fingers in her hair, it calms her when she can’t make herself still. She is always frazzled, her mind can never stay still, she is unable to keep herself still.

Her father has the same problem, his hands never still unless her mother is holding them.

For the first four years of her life, they were always moving.

She only thinks about that time when she hears him play the piano. She used to make him play for her over and over and over again, the same song that he had written for her. It had blossomed out of the song he had written for her mother.

He had written her something soft and calming and gentle, a sweet sound that was meant to lull her to sleep but never seemed to right away. Lullabies became his specialty when he suddenly had a baby that needed to be put to sleep.

He still plays her lullaby for her on bad nights, when she’s too tired, when sleep can’t come to her.

The night they move into their new home in New Hampshire, he plays her lullaby so she can fall asleep with her brother on the couch.

~`~

At thirty-six hours she was thrusted into shaking hands.

She will never remember this time, the face that left her, or her life before the abandonment. It is what it is, she was left with a family that never knew of her possibility, let alone existence until forced to accept her.

She will grow and change and never remember the time when no one wanted her.

~`~

The summer is a blur of passing her driving test, driving around the area, and playing in the forest around their new home. She climbs up into the trees and sketches as far as she can see, mountains and trees and rocks, her family when they get in the way. On nights that it rains, she curls up on the floor and watches her family.

Her father sits at the piano most nights, for as long as she can remember he has made music. Her first memories are of him talking and singing and humming to her. He had once told her she had a soft voice when she spoke, she could never manage to raise it more than her normal tone, yelling never appealed to her.

Her mother would sit in a chair with a book. She was always reading, always finding something to bury her nose into. She was a beautiful women and sometimes looking at her was like looking in the mirror, the same face, the same nose, the same lips, even the same human eyes, though one of them didn’t have brown eyes anymore.

Her grandparents would be curled up together on the couch, whispering to one another or reading or just enjoying their time together. Her grandpa would play with her nana’s hair, no matter what they were doing. Her nana would knit or sketch no matter what, she would smile and hum and find happiness even with hospital horror stories passing over her.

Her aunts and uncles were all different. Her favorite uncle would read, laying across the floor and taking up most of the limited space there. Her favorite aunt would sit on the couch and flash through the television channels, stopping on a mechanical show. Her other uncle would hold her favorite aunt and make jokes and laugh and find happiness. Her other aunt would lay on the floor and close her eyes and look into the future of their lives.

Her brother found a home on the piano bench, he was starting to let more and more of his talent show. His music was a bit more tentative than their father’s, his was quieter and even more twinkling.

Her brother also found a home in their mother’s chair. He would curl up against her and fall asleep for hours and hours.

She wished that she had a better relationship with her mother, but four long years without her cemented a separation that she couldn’t forgive.

Abandonment ran deep in her love.

She kept her love close to her heart and in the sketches she doesn’t show anyone. No one knows of this love, of the hole she keeps open in her heart. She keeps her friends close and her family closest. She loves them most and she draws them as they are, young and lovely and alive in a way they can’t see.

She keeps her father closest to her heart, he has suffered the most, but he’ll always have her.

~`~

At fifteen she moves again.

A story that isn’t true is memorized to protect herself, the ones she loves most and holds dear. She says goodbye to friends she’ll never find again, never love or know again. She is too young to be forced into goodbyes, she is too young to say her goodbyes, she is too young for goodbyes as it is.

The first thing she does is find someone to love her.

~`~

Her brother is quiet and sweet and focuses on his music.

She drives him to his school and then goes to her own, her parents want to be in her school, in her classes, keep an eye on her. She refuses, she isn’t the youngest anymore, hasn’t been since she was four, but she is treated more as a child.

Her brother goes to school, he’ll find friends, he’ll find purpose, he’ll find happiness.

She goes to school and tries to fit in. She meets girls who aren’t sincere, who aren’t nice, and who spread lies of her life. She has always hated being the new girl, always hated having eyes watch her wherever she goes, always hated girls spreading lies and boys reaching after her.

She picks up her brother after school, after his orchestra practice, and is happy for the hour she gets away from everyone. She sketches in her car, mostly from memory and mostly from old photos. Her mother has an album of photos of the people she loves and loved in her time apart from her.

Her picture, not even a baby picture, is absent from the album.

She draws in her car, she draws trees and mountains and rivers from a place that she has never visited. She draws an ocean with waves and sand and grey clouds she can never know. She draws friends that she will only know on the other side of the screen.

She draws and draws and draws, she wonders if her mother wrote like this when she was away. She reads her mother’s books, about regrets and anger, each chapter dedicated to a boy or girl that she won’t every get to truly know.

Her brother plays music until his fingers hurt and his hands ache, she draws in her sketch books until her nails chip and her fingers bleed.

It’s not enough.

~`~

At sixteen she drives and drives and drives.

She drives recklessly, she flies over hills and down streets, she takes curves at a pace three times faster than recommended. She speeds and feels her heart go wild. Her car is old for someone her age, young for the others in her family.

She makes her car sing and she remembers the motorcycle her mother loved in the short time she knew her to be human. She remembers the rumble and the purr of the bike as they road through a city that’s stars were street lights.

She remembers feeling free on the back of that motorcycle and wishing for the ride to never end.

~`~

She has friends on the other side of a screen, boys and girls that her mother is close too. Only three are older than her, three girls, though only one will talk to her. They both like to sketch, she is better at faces, her friend is better at scenery.

One of them has an ocean to look at, the other has more family than she can deal with some days.

She jumps on a plane for her mother’s home, she has never met her second grandfather in all of her memory. She is supposed to go to her hometown, to visit family friends, but she has always been able to sneak around and get what she wanted.

She gets picked up from the airport by a girl that she has only ever known on the other side of a screen and has the worst crisis that she has ever known. The word _gay_ doesn’t fit, but _bisexual_ does.

She keeps it to herself.

She spends days meeting people that she has never met in person, days eating and laughing and drawing and learning, days with a pretty girl and her husband and her growing baby bump. She wants her to herself, to kiss and hold and love, but she can’t make herself do it.

She spends hours meeting her other grandfather, a man that she shares curls and eyes with, her brother shares his silence and his jaw and nose. Her grandfather has more salt than pepper in his curls and mustache, but there’s warmth in his smile and a laugh that she has never know.

She hates her mother for not giving her this.

No one should meet their family for the first time at sixteen, but he doesn’t even know who she is to him. Her parents would never forgive her if she told him, never be able to hide away from him.

She spends an hour in her mother’s old bedroom, it’s empty of the things she wants to find. She wants photos and notebooks and memories that she can ask about. None of those things can be found, except for a sonogram that has her name written on it.

Her grandfather never notices its absence, or at least never says anything to her about it.

Her last few hours she spends in the house that her father lived in when he met her mother. Each room is old and stale and dusty, but she can tell who lived most in each by the closets and the wall hangings.

She always loved playing in clothes, the different textures of the fabrics over her fingers, something that her brother can never stand. It’s always easy to be distracted in new places, with new things to learn and explore. She can’t keep her fingers still as they slide over fabric and play with skirts and shirts.

Her father’s room is easy to tell, easier than any of the others. His music, his clothes, his memories are obvious in this house. She has always lived with ghosts, but her father is more of one than any of the others, at least until they went to her mother.

He is too sweet and too heartbroken even years later with her as company.

She slips on an old sweater for the plane ride home, and has her prettiest friend drive her to the airport. She wants to kiss her goodbye, but it’s too inappropriate with her husband in the car with them.

She lands back in her new home with a full voicemail and no parents waiting for her.

~`~

At fourteen she kisses a pretty girl that she doesn’t know.

Blonde hair, artificial red lips, dark tan skin that makes hers look ghostly. She has yellow in her green eyes, just like how she has green in her brown eyes. Her lips taste like candy, they’re soft and warm and unlike anything she’s touched before.

Her pulse is strong and loud and tastes sweet under her lips. She wants to bite, but knows that it won’t end well. Just like the heavy fog of alcohol and sweet smoke in her stomach and lungs.

Fourteen is too young to know what she wants.

~`~

She turns seventeen.

Her parents are still angry about her stolen trip months and months later, a winter and spring of anger.

She doesn’t care.

The only one who knows all the details is her brother. He keeps all of her secrets close to his heart. She is like her father, but instead of reading thoughts she projects them. Her brother is like their mother, but instead of struggling to push out her shield, it comes easy to him.

He listens and lets her show him everything. The ocean, the grey unfamiliar clouds, the abandoned rooms full of clothes and memories neither of them will ever know, their other grandfather, all the pretty girls and all the pretty boys she’s kissed and wanted to kiss.

He doesn’t ask questions, just nods his head and lets her pet his hair. She loves his hair, soft and warm and fluffy, he hates her messing it up, but doesn’t ever push her hands away. There’s too much that her hands can do, that she can tell him.

Her brother is always quiet, she grows quieter the more upset she is. Her father taught her at a young age to actually speak when she needed something, she could use her power if she wanted something, _only_ if she wanted something.

She wanted a mother who loved her like how her father did, she wanted her brother to not push away everyone around him, and she wanted a father who didn’t have to feel as if he needed to carry her. These wants were the same as needs.

Somedays when her brother got out of orchestra early, she would take him to a quiet place and draw him while he played for her. He loved the piano, but the violin was his true talent. He looked older than thirteen when he played, he sounded older when he sang to her.

Her mother played her guitar and sang to them whenever their father went away.

Her voice was rough from years of yelling, years of drinking and smoking, years from living a life she denies her children of.

The hypocrisy doesn’t surprise her anymore.

She paints the sketch of her brother in her nana’s studio, it’s filled with paints and projects and flowers. It always smells like spring, always cluttered and dirty, always open to anyone who doesn’t mind the warmth or having to watch the flowers.

She gives it to her father on his birthday, even though he hasn’t celebrated it since he stopped aging himself.

Her father always forgave her first. Her mother holds grudges.

~`~

At seventeen she finds sleep impossible.

When she was younger she would sing herself to sleep, or she would let her father rock her to sleep, or she would ask him to play for her. She would find sleep somehow, it would come to her slowly and then all at once.

Now she stays awake.

Instead of her father, she goes to her brother and curls up around him. It gets harder and harder with each year, he’s still growing and she’s staying the same.

~`~

She hides at parties.

She finds quiet corners and leans up against walls, she falls in love with hands. No one seems to notice them as much as she does. Her hands are always dirty and raw with broken nails and cuts and scrapes.

She hides at parties and lets the first pair of hands that find her take her into dark rooms. The boys always undress her, or try to at least, while the girls always let her undress them and kiss them until she’s gasping for air.

The boys always race her to the door, the girls always curl around her and play with her hair. She tries to memorize the shape and feel of their hands to put them in her sketch books later. She lets the drawings be the last reminder she has of them until the next party.

Sometimes when she can’t sleep, can’t draw, she writes and scribbles in notebooks. Her brother sleeps and she writes in the moonlight coming through the large bay windows.

Her mother still writes, but it’s mostly letters to people she can’t be close to anymore.

She wishes the letters were for her, but she’s sure that her mother wishes that her drawings were for her.

Her love of hands brings her trouble over the year, she can’t help but be attractive to pretty delicate hands, whether they belong to either gender. She can’t help but bring them to her lips, she can’t help but find the pulse in their wrist and want to bite.

It isn’t that the blood smells sweet, which it does, it’s that she loves the sound of blood rushing through their veins. Some nights she listens to the heartbeats as she keeps them trapped in the bed of their choosing.

She writes her own letters some nights, fills page after page, love letters that she can never send, lovers that she can never have again. She ends each letter with a red kiss, the only time she ever wears lipstick is to smear it.

Some late nights she goes straight to her brother’s room and wakes him just to show him her love. She’ll leave lipstick prints on his cheeks and forehead, she’ll mess up his hair, she’ll write and draw and lull him back to sleep.

She falls in love with warm hands and finds home in ice cold hands. She loves and loves and loves warm hands that take her clothes off and make her feel good. She kisses and touches and loves bodies that she can’t help but want.

~`~

At thirteen she falls from a tree.

Her arm cracks and breaks in two places, the pain is almost unbearable. She cries and screams as if she’s a baby again, a little girl who’s ears haven’t popped while the plane was landing.

When she gets home, her grandfather cares for her, loves her, and fixes her up better than before. Her father holds while she cries and she does feel like a young child, she doesn’t mind feeling like that around him.

~`~

She doesn’t know if she should tell anyone except her brother who she loves.

He doesn’t have any secrets other than the ones that she shares with him. He is silent and he doesn’t judge. He listens to her cries and listens to her sadness and listens to her crisis’s.

She doesn’t remember being a child like him, their four year age difference is unfair to her, he has a real mother, she lost hers.

She stops worrying about who she loves when her family comes home early one day and meets a girl with soft pretty hands and a soft kind body. She gets her out of the house quickly, giving her one last kiss before she leaves her.

Her father is frustrated, he was once a religious man, some things still run deep in his brain, things that can be unlearned. Her mother is the one who brings sense to the family, she kisses her forehead, gives her a small piece of love, and later tells everyone to let her be who she is.

The abandonment hurts a little less now than before. She feels love where before was anger.

She escapes out into the forest, and climbs higher and higher with each passing day. The cold feels good as she tries to wrap her head around the pain she feels at her father’s anger. She isn’t the daughter that was thrusted into his arms seventeen years ago, she is a daughter that he claims to not know anymore.

She doesn’t fall anymore when the wind blows, but she lets herself freeze and grow colder and colder. She looks out at the forest that she’s grown to love and she draws what she can with the little patience she manages.

The only joy that comes to her is letters and photos of her godson.

He’s adorable and chubby and she wants to meet him, would beg to meet him if it was even an option. Her parents won’t let her travel without a chaperone, but they include her brother as one.

She makes plans for the end of the school year, she tucks away clothes and money for them both. Her car isn’t much but it’ll get them across the country for a summer.

She’ll spend her eighteenth birthday under rain and clouds, away from the overbearing and judgmental attitude of her family. She’ll spend her eighteenth birthday with friends, with her godson, and with her brother.

Her brother doesn’t fight her when she gives him the aux chord and they take off. They’re hidden from visions and thoughts, her phone is turned off, while his is silenced. She drives through the night, drives after the sun comes up, and drives after the sun goes down again.

She stops in all night diners and draws while her brother eats, she stops at gas stations and turns on her phone only to send updates to those waiting for them.

When they finally pull up outside the little house with the police cruiser, she brings her brother in, introduces him to their second grandfather, and falls asleep for the first time in months.

The summer passes in family dinners, playing in the ocean, exploring a new forest. She learns to drive a motorcycle that was just like her mother’s had once been. They run with wolves, she draws fur and kind eyes, she writes little letters to her family and sends them back with her drawings. They know where they are, but they won’t come to get them.

She is eighteen, she doesn’t have to go back.

She does anyway.

~`~

At eighteen she runs away.

She dances and sings and draws and lets herself feel alive. She runs through unfamiliar woods, she laughs with her friends, and she plays with her godson.

She runs away from a family that loves her, but doesn’t understand her. She drags along her brother and makes him see a world outside what they know.

She runs away at eighteen, but comes back a new person.

~`~

Her father is playing the piano when they finally walk through the front door, a whole summer since she spoke to him, a whole summer since they had seen each other. The song changes into something familiar and lovely and lulling.

She sits down beside him, rests her head on his shoulder, and falls asleep.

She wakes up in familiar arms and remembers being a little girl only wanting her dada.

She curls up tighter and goes back to sleep, eighteen is too young to be this tired, for the world to be this big and quiet and unfamiliar.

When she finally makes herself wake up, she goes to the city. Loud and chaotic, a city that sparkles with artificial stars. She finds art at every turn, in every blink of an eye, in every breath that she takes.

It’s where she meets him.

Tall and friendly, red eyed and tired, he sparkles and shines and follows her around corners and through dark allies. She dances just out of reach, dances away from his arms, presses kisses into his silent pulse point. It taste sweet against her mouth, and she lets him take her.

Unlike her mother, he stays when she pushes him away. He follows after her and keeps her close.

She still loves pretty girls, but she loves him more. She feels it in every kiss, feels it as he presses her against cars, against walls, against his chest. She feels love in an overwhelming way, an all-consuming way.

Like her mother, she’ll have a baby by graduation.

~`~

At twelve she bleeds.

A pain that she could never imagine blooms in her.

She bleeds and cries and wishes for the pain, the mess, to go away. She is too young for responsibility like this, too young to be forced into this possibility.

~`~

Her daughter looks like her in the most unfamiliar way.

She had screamed and cried and cursed her into the world, the pain rolled over her again and again and again and she doesn’t know why her mother did it a second time. Her body aches and she cries long into the night after her daughter is born.

She feels a sadness in her heart that she doesn’t see going away.

She feels kisses pressed to her forehead, pressed to her cheek and neck, pressed to her wrists and breasts and stomach. He gives her love and presses their daughter into her arms.

She loves him, she loves her daughter, she runs away with them both.

Her daughter screams into the night and she cries with her, she curls them up together and tries to calm her before sleep takes them both. When she finally sleeps through the night, she starts to draw again.

Her mother still writes, letters and stories that she sends to her. She hides them away in a box in the back of her closet, she doesn’t need to be guilted into coming home. She just needs her daughter and her love.

She keeps her close to her heart, she kisses her cheeks and fingers and little toes. She holds her, cradles her softly in her arms, and takes her everywhere with her. She has dark curly hair with her own red mixed in, she is pale with her freckles, and she has her eyes, big and brown.

Her daughter looks like her, but she is her father’s daughter. He loves her and adores her, sings them both to sleep and kisses her until she can’t breathe. He presses his lips against her own pulse point and smells blood as it rushes through her veins.

Somedays when their daughter sleeps, she bites his neck and kisses him until everything comes undone. Somedays she goes out and finds a girl for them to put love into. She smiles and flirts and brings them home, he bites first, letting the blood slip into his mouth then hers.

They don’t have to run in a city that’s stars are street lamps.

~`~

At nineteen she has a baby.

A daughter that will grow and change and become better than her. A daughter that will learn and live and love knowing that she is always loved.

She will not have abandonment in her love.

~`~

Her brother comes to visit often, always asking her to come home. He can’t resist his nieces though, all three of them are beautiful, all three of them love him.

Her oldest is just like her father, bright and hopeful, sweet and sparkling.

Her next daughter is like her, with the same face and hair and smile. She is unsteady, she is reckless and wild and loves easily.

Her youngest is the worst of them both, she has brown curls and blue eyes and a wild heart. She is bright, she is shaky, she is sweet, and she is wild.

They are all beautiful, they all love, they all want more. She loves her daughters, all three of them take her worst and make it better. She has an artist, a singer, and a musician. She has three daughters that she loves and will always love.

They make her feel better, they take the small piece of sadness that’s locked in her heart and makes it disappear. She feels them float away, feels them evaporate when her daughters are with her.

Her brother feels the same way. He sings and plays his music and she watches the life come to his eyes. He wants to go away for school, he wants to run away to the home she took him once. He’s in love with a girl they’re not allowed to love by their family’s standards.

She helps him run away in the days after his graduation.

~`~

At twenty-six her life is her own.

She is no longer trapped, no longer the unloved, no longer the abandoned daughter.

~`~

Renesmee kissed Nicholas then turned to her daughters, Elizabeth, Josephine, and Amelia to press a kiss to their foreheads. The three of them were a turning, moving, wild entity together, full of happiness and laughter.

She feels their hands press to her stomach, their newest sister will be with them soon, Margret will love them as much as they love her. The world is big enough for them all, the world will love them and hold them close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, drop a comment if you feel like it.
> 
> Also if anyone is interested in my other Twilight stories, I have a bunch of stories about different Wolf Pack pairings.
> 
> Thanks again!


	4. America

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last but not least, Evander.

**America**

_By Simon and Garfunkel_

_Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together  
I've got some real estate here in my bag  
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies  
And we walked off to look for America  
Cathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh  
Michigan seems like a dream to me now  
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw  
I've gone to look for America_

_Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces  
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy  
I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera  
Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat  
We smoked the last one an hour ago  
So I looked at the scenery  
She read her magazine  
And the moon rose over an open field_

_Cathy, I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping  
And I'm empty and aching and I don't know why  
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike  
They've all come to look for America  
All come to look for America  
All come to look for America_

~`~

He lives in constant motion.

His father and sister are always moving, they’re always moving, shaking, thinking. They’re loud in a world that works for them, offensive to the defense that he keeps close to himself.

His mother likes the silence almost as much as him.

His world is in constant motion, but he finds stillness over the keys of a piano, over the strings of a violin, over the music that keeps him alive. His hands make more noise than the world will ever know, his sister draws the world in black and white, he sees everything in startling color.

They move again, his sister is gone, she has given him nieces and an appreciation for human blood. His sister finds pretty girls, he finds men that cause him to become dangerous.

They move away from his sister, a trip to a different world, a different country, an ocean of separation. He starts school and sends back letters that only contain music. He loves the piano, but the violin is his home.

His sister sends him drawings of his nieces and husband and hands, soft and pretty and graceful. Hands that are cold and dead and never had a chance when she smiled and batted her dark eyes at them. It makes him smile and laugh, his sister has always been able to pull others in with just her eyes.

He sends her letters of music, photos of their family, and shared love that only they know.

~`~

At two months old, he’s shown to the family.

He doesn’t remember any of it, but he knows that his father was proud, mother was nervous, and sister was curious of what was happening. He doesn’t remember any of it, but he knows his grandparents, his uncles, and his aunts were overjoyed to meet him.

He doesn’t remember any of it, but it’s not his to know.

~`~

His sister still sends him secrets, he’s always kept her guarded, always kept the things she told him locked away with all the other things he isn’t supposed to know. He was quiet, he listened and he let the world give him all it’s secrets. He knew too much, his mother always told him this in the mornings after his sister went back to her room.

He listens to what the world has to offer him, he finds music in the wind, finds music in the rushing water, finds music in heartbeats and even breathing. He hears flutters of music out in the forests around his newest home.

He doesn’t like to move, but when his family decides to leave, he moves into a dorm.

Music plagues the dorms, loud and full and defining.

He learns to sleep through it all.

~`~

At three years old, he plays the piano.

His little fingers touch the keys, they learn the gentle tunes, they copy what his father played hours before. He becomes more sure, letting the music move through him instead of out of him. Music becomes his home.

He picks up a violin at the same age, the world becomes quiet as long as he plays.

~`~

He enjoys the quiet of early mornings in the dorms, he gets his work done quickly and he writes letters to his sister. Somedays, he talks to a pretty girl on the other side of a screen.

When he was younger, his sister kidnapped him and they ran away to their true home. They lived in unfamiliar forests, by a gray ocean, with family that he never knew. He met a man that was his grandfather, he met boys and girls the same age as him, he met a family he should’ve always known.

The twins become his penpals, they share letters and stories, music and art, one has a baby at nineteen, the other goes to school. He falls in love quickly, but his family would never allow it, they would never accept her.

He applies to schools stateside, Master programs in the same cities she applies to her own Master programs.

They both end up in Washington, they both find comfort in one another, they moved in together in a small one bedroom apartment and don’t let anyone judge them.

The world is quiet as she studies and he plays his music, she sings for him and he hums her to sleep. They write, they laugh, they look after their siblings and nieces and nephews.

~`~

At eleven, they move again.

His sister will disappear after this move, she’ll give him nieces, get married to a man who adores her, she’ll stay happy and carefree. He misses her at eleven when she runs off for summers and hides away from their family.

His father continues his music lessons, he’s kind hearted and more gentle as a father than anything else. He listens to wants and needs, he provides and accepts, he lets him be and play his music.

His mother still writes, she still scribbles over pages and plays her guitar and sings loudly. He can imagine her with a drink, with smoke in her lungs. He can imagine more possibilities for her than anyone else in the world.

~`~

She breathes life into him.

Her kisses are soft and warm, her eyes bright and alive, her laughter, her voice all knowing and powerful. She tells him secrets, stories of her Tribe, stories of her childhood, she tells him things that he isn’t allowed to know.

He keeps her secrets and understands finally how his sister could fall in love with hands.

Her hands hold his face with patience and gentle fingers, she runs them through his hair when he can’t sleep. She kisses his forehead and makes him laugh something warm and filling. She presses love and red lipstick into his skin, just as his sister had done when he was little.

Love keeps him grounded to her, keeps him honest, keeps him from spilling secrets.

Love grows inside them both, but it’s seen on her body. He can feel the presses of a small foot, of a perfect hand and little fingers, he can hear a third heartbeat in their tiny apartment.

He loves her and the life she gives him, gives he world.

~`~

At sixteen years old, he learns to fly on concrete.

The roads disappear under his motorcycle, under his sister’s old car, under his feet. He loves the rush of adrenaline, the rush of wind, the rush of flying at top speed. He isn’t as skilled as his sister at going fast, at breaking the limit.

He still figures out how to do it.

~`~

His daughter is born a month before he graduates.

She gets tucked into a sling and pressed against his chest under his robes. She sleeps through all the talking, through all the noise, through him walking across a stage and receiving his diploma again.

She cries the second his mother hugs him.

Crying is the least of it, she screams, loud and unforgiving, known more than anything else.

His sister is a rush of soothing whispers and laughter and her own four daughters that scream and laugh and play around him. His Beloved takes their baby and she falls asleep in her arms.

His parents, his aunts and uncles, his grandparents that helped raised him, they don’t know what to think of his daughter. She’s a bright little thing, named after the moon, with bright eyes like his and the rest of her like his Beloved.

His sister laughs at the thought of him not being the perfect child they all thought he was. He was supposed to be the good one, the smart one who didn’t cause trouble, who fell in love with the right person.

Except he did, he fell in love with a girl who would love him forever, or as long as they’re forever would last. He saw an end to his life, unlike his sister who would live forever, he saw himself dying one day.

He wanted to explain his daughter, but he couldn’t, he loved her, loved his Beloved, loved the life they had together. He wanted to keep them his own secret, but that wasn’t going to happen, his family had appeared for graduation and they saw his new life without them.

~`~

At seventeen years old, he graduated from high school.

His family made them disappear within a day, packing them up, getting them on a plane, and leaving everything behind. He followed behind, he wanted to leave, but he wanted to be with the family.

He wanted to disappear on his own, but that was never going to happen.

~`~

His daughter is a wondrous little being.

She grows quickly and is soon singing and dancing and reciting stories to them. She laughs and the world shakes with the noise of joy, he loves the noise of her joy. She crawls into his lap and asks him to play the piano for her, he kisses the top of her head and plays all the old songs that he remembers his father playing for him and his sister.

He plays the violin for her too, but she always demands to sit in his lap and play the piano. He wants to teach her, but he can tell that it won’t happen, she would rather dance to the music than play it.

He sings to her sometimes, quietly because he’s always quiet. He doesn’t mind the noise his girls live with, because it’s warm and happy. He watches them laugh and read and share stories, he watches them change and grow, all of them change and grow.

He watches his Beloved walk down the beach towards him, her hair braided with seashells and flowers, her dress tight around her full stomach. She’ll give him a son, two years after she gave him a daughter.

He loves her, he’ll travel the world for her, but he doesn’t have too. She follows him to concert halls, dragging their children between the pair of them, their family grows beyond two children, beyond four child, and finally to five.

Three daughters and two sons.

~`~

At twenty-one years old, he drinks all of his desires.

Liquor isn’t for him, but on the nights where the world is too loud, he drinks the world. He drinks from men who chase after women, who don’t understand consent, who fight him as he drinks from them. He drinks their blood and lets his desires mix with the alcohol.

He lets himself kill and he only lets himself have one secret.

~`~

Five children become a handful quickly, but they manage them easily. They play and laugh, he sings and creates music for them, he loves them equally unlike his own parents.

His father loved his sister best, the stolen four years they were together. His mother always held him close, unable to see him disappointed, unable to let him go.

He lives in the old house, the one that his father once lived in when he met her mother. Each room is used, each of his children fill the house with love and personality.

Their three daughters are all different. His oldest the dancer, she loves her room on the top floor. She dances in sunlight, she laughs when she falls. His second daughter, their third child, loves to draw. Her room on the top floor is filled with sunlight and drawings that she creates, she paints on dark days when sunlight escapes them. His youngest daughter, their fifth child, sings as if sunlight comes out of her. She is wild at heart and her voice can shatter glass, she lives on the second floor and crawls into their bed on stormy nights.

Their sons are two sides of a coin, both musicians like him. His oldest plays piano, he lives on the second floor and fills the world with haunting melodies. He escapes into the dark, he prefers the dark and the stormy weather to the rare sunlight. His youngest son, their fourth child, plays the guitar and sings and is in a band with his brother and sister and cousins that he can convince to play with him. His songs are all full of light, warm and soft, calming and quiet, they turn heads and make the world change.

He loves them all, he kisses them all goodnight and tucks them into bed. He knows who will crawl into their bedroom late at night when the rain becomes too loud, when thunder shakes the house and lightning brightens the sky. Some nights its all five, but more often it’s only one.

He holds them close, they wake him and he can’t sleep until they all do. He knows which ones don’t sleep at night, knows which ones fall asleep easily.

His wife, his Beloved, she teaches them everything, she teaches them kindness and love, teaches them their heritage and stories of the past. She teaches them the songs of their people, the histories they should know, she has always been the storyteller, the history keeper.

They learn more from her than him, he only teaches them silence and patience and music.

Somedays they all need reminders.

~`~

At twenty-three years old, he has his first child.

She screams into the world, a brightness that he can’t help but love, she makes the world better.

He loves her, loves her energy, loves her like breathing, loves her more than music.

She becomes his new music.

~`~

He plays in concert halls, but it’s not the same as his home. It’s not the same as his son sitting next to him, his daughter singing, his children close to him. It’s not the same as his Beloved with her head on his shoulder and her hand on his knee, keeping him grounded.

He sings to them in the mornings before school, each of them moving and laughing and getting ready for the day. His oldest daughter is nearly fifteen, his youngest is five, her first day of school is exciting and scary for them all.

He knew that the house would be empty, so he got a job teaching music, his first love.

He lets his oldest drive them to school, she’s a better driver than him, she follows the speed limits and laughs when they get flipped off. She’s better than him in so many ways, better than his sister and her murders, better than his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles all playing human.

His children are his joy, his Beloved the love of his life, he’ll grow old with her and die.

He can’t wait for the next step.

~`~

At forty years old, he watches his children grow beyond him.

He loves them, loves watching them explore the world, loves that they move on beyond him and their mother. He loves them with every breath, he loves them more than music.

They’re his legacy.

~`~

Evander kissed Mackenzie’s cheek and turned back to the piano. His fingers moved over the keys effortlessly, years of practice, years of love put into his keys and into his music.

He blinked and suddenly his children filled the room, Lunabelle, his oldest leading the way. She sat down on the floor and pulled her youngest brother Sirius into her lap, she was seventeen and he was ten.

Andromeda, their youngest came and sat down beside him, her oldest brother Regulus picked up and put her on his lap as he sat down beside Evander. Finally, Lyra, their middle child, sat down on the floor and stretched out before them.

Evander smiled as he let the music change, let Regulus play along with him, let Andromeda climb over into his lap.

He felt his heart grow warm, he felt the music swell, felt the quiet wrap around him.

This was home, this was family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm done, I've done the whole family. Please R&R!

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so...what do we think?


End file.
